Review: Pico’s Crush by Carol Van Natta

Pico’s Crush (Central Galactic Concordance #3)
by Carol Van Natta

Rating: 4 stars
Genre: Science Fiction Romance

Blurb:
Trouble comes to paradise when a serial killer chooses a galaxy-famous college campus for his hunting ground. A galactic security specialist expects a quiet vacation visit to his daughter’s college campus. Instead he finds himself in battling for the safety of the students, with old friends and an ex-military squad-mate fighting at his side. Can they find a cunning serial killer before he finds his next target?

When ex-military sniper and current personal security specialist Jerzi Adams visits his daughter Pico’s quiet college on the paradise-like planet of Nila Marbela, he doesn’t expect emergency evacuations and rogue robots. Nor does he expect to renew a friendship with former squad-mate.

Explosions, sabotage, and assaults used to be Andra De Luna’s daily routine, but she gave it up for a professorship at a prestigious university. Now she’s flung back into that world, with an entire floating campus of students to protect.

When the hunt for a cunning serial killer leads Jerzi’s old friends Luka and Mairwen (Overload Flux) to town, there’s trouble in paradise as the body count starts to rise. Either the world of academia has gone from merely cutthroat to downright deadly, or more sinister forces are in conflict, with the campus as a battleground. Without an improvised miracle or two, no one’s going to make it out alive.

My Review

Pico’s Crush is the exciting third book in the Central Galactic Concordance series. I really enjoyed the first two books in this series and this book was just as good. One things I especially liked about this book is how it bring the plot lines and characters from the first two books together and also introduces us to some new characters.

At first I thought Pico’s Crush would be about Pico and her crush. Then once I started reading I thought it would be Jerzi’s story and romance, whom we already met in books. Eventually I can only conclude it’s both of those and more. Yes Pico is one of the main characters, but Jerzi too and Jerzi’s love interest has a big role to play too and Pico’s crush turns out to be the assistant of Mairwen and Luka, who play a role in this book too. It was great.

The story is mostly about a serial killer who makes the campus unsafe. Pico studies at the campus and Andra teaches there. Jerzi is visiting his daughter and Luka and Mairwen are following the serial killer, which brings them all together on this planet. And then things start going wrong. There is a scene toward the end of the book that takes several chapters and with how little I read each evening it could be a bit hard to follow and keep everything straight as it’s a pretty long sequence of scenes with lots of characters involved. But it also made for a great action and danger packed part.

The story is told from the multiple point of views. While I love the multiple point of views, it did cause the book to feel a little less focused and less small scoped than the first two ones. Which worked, but at the same time I felt like Jerzi and Andra’s romance and Pico and Sojaire’s romance got a bit less attention than the romances in the first two books. Nevertheless both romances still were worked out really well and I really felt the romances. Pico and Sojaire were so cute together and I thin they made for a great couple once they got past their misunderstandings. I also liked Jerzi and Andra, who both didn’t have had the best history when it came to romance now find each other.

I really liked seeing Mairwen and Luka again. They are probably my favorite couple of this series and it was so fun to see them again. And it’s amazing how well Carol Van Natta writes them even when seen from another point of view. Sometimes characters seem very different when the author writes them from another perspective and I was totally impressed how Mairwen was still typically Mairwen even when seen from one of the other character’s perspective. Same with all the characters actually, but Mairwen has such a distinctive personality that with her you notice it even more. I loved the meeting between Liéren and Luka, it was totally awesome to read, although I am not fully sure what the significance of that meeting will be yet. And the scene where Mairwen had to handle the kids was quite funny.

There isn’t much mystery about who’s behind the attacks on campus as we get the bad guys perspective as well. The bad guys were pretty nasty and creepy and I have the feeling we haven’t seen the last of them yet. But even with the lack of mystery it is still great to see it all play out. I am a bit uncertain how some things tied together or maybe I missed some subtle hints as the story can be quite complex at times.

I liked how this book tied the previous ones together and also adds some pieces of world building. Things all come together and fall on it’s place. It also is an important book in terms of continuity and while it always was obvious this series was part of one universe, this book also ties al the individual storylines together as one big whole. There is more we learn about the CPS and how they work. And it was fun to see another planet as well. There are also some different minder gifts we see in action with Sojaire, Pico and Jerzi all having minder abilities.

To summarize: this was another great book in this series. It’s filled with action, a great story, romance and an awesome cast of characters. It also ties the previous books together and has a bunch of recurring characters as well as new ones. The author does a great job with the characterization of all the characters and I liked reading about all the characters. It was awesome to see Luka and Mairwen again and Liéren too. This book had two romances going on, Pico and Sojaire and Jerzi and Andra, I liked both romances and it was great to see them all play out. I really enjoyed this book and I am curious about the next book and to see how everything what happened in this book will be relevant later on in the series.

Links:
– Goodreads
– Amazon
– B&N
– Kobo

You can also read my review on Goodreads and Amazon.

Do you like books with multiple main characters?